Posted
by
kdawson
on Friday June 25, 2010 @10:20AM
from the do-not-look-directly-into-the-quasar dept.

KentuckyFC writes "In 2007, a Dutch school teacher named Hanny van Arkel discovered a huge blob of green-glowing gas while combing though images to classify galaxies. Hanny's Voorwerp (meaning Hanny's object in Dutch) is astounding because astronomers have never seen anything like it. Although galactic in scale, it is clearly not a galaxy because it does not contain any stars. That raises an obvious question: what is causing the gas to glow? Now a new survey of the region of sky seems to have solved the problem. The Voorwerp lies close to a spiral galaxy which astronomers now say hides a massive black hole at its center. The infall of matter into the black hole generates a cone of radiation emitted in a specific direction. The great cloud of gas that is Hanny's Voorwerp just happens to be in the firing line, ionizing the gas and causing it to glow green. That lays to rest an earlier theory that the cloud was reflecting an echo of light from a short galactic flare up that occurred 10,000 years ago. It also explains why Voorwerps are so rare: these radiation cones are highly directional so only occasionally do unlucky gas clouds get caught in the crossfire."

Voorwerp indeed translates into English as object, yet it only refers to objects you can, say, pick up. A car would already be a stretch. A more general translation of the English word object is the Dutch word object. Using the first name of the discoverer and the word voorwerp for an object this size has a ring of understatement to it.

If memory serves (not always reliable before coffee) the radiation emanates from the poles, and actually comes from the accretion disk, not the hole itself. I believe that all black holes rotate due to the fact that they retain the angular momentum from in-falling matter.

Yeah. The piece of info I was looking for was the part about a black hole maintaining it's angular momentum, and apparently it's electrical charge. It is true that most if not all massive bodies have some measurable spin.

I'm not an astro-physicist, but I do watch a lot of space-science documentaries. My understanding is that black holes spin, and sometimes two spin while also rotating around each other. Of course this happens very fast. The result [insert PhD-level explanation here] is a vortex which ejects stuff out of the one or two black holes at the "poles" of the action. Sort of like if the Earth spat out junk from the North and South poles. (Actually, we sort of do spit out magnetism at the poles, so it's sort of like

Damn, science is cool. The stories science tells are better than the stories religions tell. Not only are the science stories bigger, grander, more interesting, more awe-inspiring, but they also have the significant added benefit of being true, to the extent that truth can be known. When science doesn't know the answer to something, science doesn't resort to meaningless cop-outs like "God did it". Instead, science gives the more reasonable answer "Yeah, uh, we don't know what that is, but we're looking into

Yes, clearly these are angels lighting their farts. If we refuse to teach the angels-lighting-their-farts theory of celestial gaseous illumination, then we will be depriving people of the diversity of opinions in this field. Why would astronomers want to cover it up anyway? Are they afraid it might be true?

The problem with religious stories is that the mythologies are too paltry

Nice troll. Really.

But, to play purely devil's advocate -- if there truly was a creator-being, it would encompass all that is science, and wouldn't require the Earth to be only 6000 years old.

That creator would fall into the realm of completely unknowable -- it would be outside of what we understand of the universe, and capable of understanding and manipulating things we still can't fathom. I'm not sure the human brain could wrap itself around what that would really imply since it would be such a vastly complex and advanced thing as to be beyond our ability to perceive and understand.

When you get to questions about "what existed before the big bang" or "what happens after we die" or the other really meta stuff, you are outside of what science can comment on. Morality, for example, isn't really in the realm of science.

While not personally religious, I've known people with degrees in astrophysics who were quite religious, and had absolutely no conflict between the science and their concept of god. However, being Really Fucking Smart People with an understanding of the science... their concept of god was correspondingly much bigger, and encompassed a whole lot more. God didn't need to be stepping into fiddle with the bits science wasn't clear on, and science didn't intrude on the bits that God was in control of. For them, there existed no dichotomy between god and science.

My notion is that if your religion can include all applicable science, it's not harming anybody, and is probably a good thing overall. It's only when the religion needs to deny the science to prop up its own viewpoints that it starts to break down. At a certain level, they do (and should) cover non-intersecting areas of endeavor.

Religion isn't bad per se, it's bad when it wants to override reality and is inflexible/oblivious to the world around it.

The problem is that most people are not 'Einsteinian' or 'Spinozan' deists, content that 'god' is some amorphous force out there. Most 'religious' people believe in divine revelation, which is the source of all the 'paltry' conceptions of divine environments, behaviors, and figures. And of course these divine revelations are not limited to descriptions, but include many imperatives at odds with each other and with secular society.

If we can't know 'god', fine, the problem is most religious people think that they know god, know what 'he' wants, and feel that they are justified above any structure of society whether that is law, culture, or common morality (genocide is bad, except when GOD does it or people are commanded by him to do it!) to act on 'his' imperatives as they conceive them to be.

You're kidding right? You don't think the world would be improved by a sudden shift of seven billion people to a view of reality based on observed phenomena and testable hypotheses instead of millennia-old moralistic fiats from sociopathic mystics? Instead you essentially posit that the merits of scientists would evaporate and be essentially meaningless. Wow, that's such a good argument.

If everybody on earth tomorrow turned into intellectual and emotional clones of, say, Pierre and Marie Curie, I can't im

Pierre Curie was run over by a carriage in the street. Marie was 66 when she died, which was a decent age for the time, cancer or no. At least during that time she won two Nobel prizes for her work, primitive by current standards though it was. That work contributed directly to the understanding of radiation that protects people today.

Religion isn't bad per se, it's bad when it wants to override reality and is inflexible/oblivious to the world around it.

But who gets to decide? Buddhism: good, Christianity: bad. I can see some fundamental First Amendment problems here. So lets just keep them all out of the classroom, courtroom, and laboratory. Or make me the Grand Inquisitor and I'll deal with the heretics.

All religions are bad. The fact that development of cultures often happened under the umbrellas of religious traditions, does not change the fact that each religion has an unrealistic superstition at its core.

I can see some fundamental First Amendment problems here.

First Amendment does not protect you from being called an idiot -- not even if government calls you so.

All religions are bad. The fact that development of cultures often happened under the umbrellas of religious traditions, does not change the fact that each religion has an unrealistic superstition at its core.

I call it the Santa Claus effect. Small children can be bribed into behaving by creating a belief in a fat man who brings presents to the good children. Eventually, they grow out of this as they develop internal sets of morals. Back in ancient times, then people were largely illiterate, some means of proscribing 'proper' behavior was needed. Take the edicts against eating pork or shellfish. The wisest men of the village didn't know why these foods would make one sick. So even if they attributed this to some

Now, cut to the present. There are still people too immature or un-self aware to develop internal rules of morality, even as adults. So religion still plays a necessary part in incorporating them into society safely. The problem with religion is that those that need external guidance are exactly the people that you don't want running things.

That's a nice theory. But where's the evidence that that actually works? And where is the evidence that we need to lie to people in order for them to behave morally?

That's a nice theory. But where's the evidence that that actually works? And where is the evidence that we need to lie to people in order for them to behave morally?

Good questions. There may be studies to back up my hypothesis, but I'm relying on my own anecdotal evidence. Some real sociologists are going to have to conduct proper experiments to get real numbers.

In fact, correlations between religious affiliation and behavior often show that the less religious people are, the better they behave in just those areas where religions claim to promote morality; this is true both at a population level and at the level of nations.

But correlation does not prove causation. Religious beliefs may lead people to immoral behavior. Or those people who require the external guidance of a faith in place of an internal set of morals may tend to backslide more absent continuous supervision.

There is, however, plenty of evidence that religion is being abused for political purposes.

It more often works the other way around -- religious person acts selfishly and destructive, expecting that his unwavering belief in god is more important than his actions toward lesser beings, other humans.

But who gets to decide? Buddhism: good, Christianity: bad. I can see some fundamental First Amendment problems here.

What's there to decide? Treating Christianity as intrinsically immoral and at the same tolerating its practice are not incompatible with one another; as long as secular laws keep Christians from harming other people or imposing their immoral beliefs on others, they can do whatever they want, just like anybody else.

So lets just keep them all out of the classroom, courtroom, and laboratory.

I quote one of my favorite historical figures ( strictly because he was an arrogant asshole );

"Fix Reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason than of blindfolded fear." - T. Jefferson

When science doesn't know the answer to something, science doesn't resort to meaningless cop-outs like "God did it". Instead, science gives the more reasonable answer "Yeah, uh, we don't know what that is, but we're looking into it.

More often, they say "Further research is needed", and they apply for grants. Sorta like what they did in this case.

And then, at some point, science usually comes back and says, hey, we figured it out, and the answer is awesome.

In Dutch, I'm sure that's true, but if this word were to enter English as a term meaning "illuminated intergalactic dust cloud", then it might well follow English rules of pluralization, as so many borrowed words do (e.g. "ninjas" or "octopuses"[*]).

The real problem is that the stupid summary treats "voorwerp" as if it really were already adopted into English with the given meaning. The statement "Voorwerps are so rare" is simply false, because voorwerp means object, and objects are not rare.

Actually "Hanny's Voorwerp" is not correct Dutch at all. The 's in Dutch is used for plural form of certain words, not for the possessive form.It should be written as "Hannies Voorwerp" if it were proper Dutch.(the s is directly affixed without apostrophe, and as in this case the word ends in y the y is changed to ie)

Astronomer: Hi, Honey!Astronomer's wife: Hello dear, how was work?Astronomer: Oh, the usual. An astounding object we've never seen before, and a couple of amazing discoveries, and this morning was a mad house, there was a huge batch of surprising observations waiting for me when I got in. I was swamped for hours.Astronomer's wife: That's nice, dear.

As the candy hearts poured into the fiery quasar, a wondrous thing happened, why not. They vaporised into a mystical love radiation that spread across the universe, destroying many, many planets, including two gangster planets and a cowboy world. But one planet was at exactly the right distance to see the romantic rays, but not be destroyed by them: Earth. So all over the world, couples stood together in joy. And me, Zoidberg! And no one could have been happier unless it would have also been Valentine's Day